Within the next few weeks or months, the federal government of Canada is poised to enact legislation that would redefine marriage to include homosexual unions. Everyone realizes the vote in Parliament will be very close, so please pray for the Members of Parliament and for Canadian churches in the days ahead. For more information, visit: Defend Marriage, Canada!

Greetings from Indonesia. We’re in a house in a small city on the island of Sulawesi. Some of you won’t be interested in this, so feel free to skip this post! But for those who are, here are a few highlights.

We arrived in Jakarta yesterday from Singapore. We’ve definitely learned the word “bule” (=white man). As in a kid pointing and yelling “Hey bule!” Or a man in line nonchalantly turning around and saying, “Hello bule.” We stick out here like sore thumbs—especially me, given my size! I feel like a white Shaquille O’Neill surrounded by a lot of sweet short people. We're the first western men some of them have ever seen in person.

Women here don’t mind picking their nose in public. I couldn’t find a creative way to weave that fact into the narrative—so I thought I’d just say it.

In a line in Jakarta, I stepped backward and found—unfortunately—that my size 13 shoe was crushing the small shoe of a very made-up airline stewardess. I apologized profusely, but she gave me a very dirty look and was none too pleased. (I also hit a Japanese girl in the head with a water bottle in Tokyo, but she at least forgave me!)

Our flight to Makassar found us waiting for an hour on the runway—without the engines of the plane running and with the door of the airplane shut! It was amazing no one passed out. Oh, and Bill and I were in the front row of the plane, directly across from the stewardess’s seat. To my mortification, it turns out that the stewardess was the same woman whose foot I nearly crushed! She eventually forgave me!

Last night we went to a prayer team. I think it may have been the first time in my life that I’ve fallen asleep while singing. The jet lag was sinking in. On the way out of the prayer meeting, I took a misstep and found myself with my leg halfway down a sewer hole (called a “goat”). I’m happy—as usual—to provide the unintended comic relief.

We ate Pizza Hut pizza last night. Our friend Lori is right—the Pizza Hut is better in Indonesia than in America!

We stayed last night in a hotel. I think that my suitcase weighed more than the little Indonesian guy who had to carry it up three flights of stairs! The toilet and the shower are in one stall, so that made for an interesting crosscultural experience today. I have yet to experience the squatting toilet though (which will come tomorrow when we stay at an Indonesian family’s house).

We got up this morning at 5 am and left around 6 am for the 4-hour car ride to the village. The traffic here is unbelievable. I call it Indonesian Traffic Basket Weaving—or Perpetual Motion. The markings on the road are considered “suggestions” only. There are essentially four lanes of traffic on a two-lane road. Lots of people on motorcycles. It’s not unusual for a car to be literally inches away from a bike or from an oncoming car. I had the front seat on the 4-hour trek. Quite hair-raising at times.

The scenery—especially as we approached Soppeng—was absolutely gorgeous. Lucious green terraces and majestic mountains. My traveling partner Bill is an amateur photographer, and I think he’s going to have some great pictures.

This afternoon we joined Beth and Lori for their English class—which consists of seven Indonesian teachers of English. We answered some questions, and Bill showed photographs to illustrate the four seasons in Minnesota.

Tomorrow we’ll start living with our Indonesian host family for a couple of days. We’d appreciate your prayers!

One of the most enjoyable debates between an atheist and a Christian I have ever heard can be listen to through the Reformation Ink website. Follow this link, and search on 'Bahnsen' to find The Great Debate. If you haven't listen to this, you will love it!

Bahnsen does a masterful job of showing how all people, even atheists, believe in God at some level of their being (Cf. Romans 1:19, 21). If one masters Bahnsen's (and Van Til's) transcendental argument for the existence of God, he will have a sound, Biblical way to "refute those who contradict" (Titus 1:9).

Thursday, February 24, 2005

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Leland Ryken’s excellent work, The Word of God in English: Criteria for Excellence in Bible Translation. Ryken was the literary stylist for the publication of the English Standard Version (ESV). C. John “Jack” Collins of Covenant Seminary was the Old Testament chair for the translation. Collins contributes an excellent appendix to Ryken’s book, entitled “Without Form, You Lose Meaning.” It is a sane, calm, persuasive Christlike piece of writing. (Unlike, for example, this piece posted at World Magazine’s TNIV site.

He has four complaints about dynamic-equivalent translations:

Such translations make interpretive decisions for the reader, and run the risk of deciding wrongly.

Such a philosophy requires the translator to resolve ambiguities for the reader

This philosophy urges the translator to interpret images and figures for the reader

This philosophy generally leads to the loss of important repetitions.

What feature do these four defects have in common? “The reader is limited to what the translator allows him to see.”

Collins’s thesis is as follows: “My thesis is that, however capable the scholars—and that, mind you, is not under dispute—dynamic equivalence will almost certainly not represent the meaning more accurately than an essentially literal rendering. The very translation philosophy pushes the product away from accuracy.”

Here are some other helpful quotes from his chapter:

“The impulse to clarify . . . insists that the translator decide what it is and give that to the reader.” (p. 304)

“Old Testament wisdom works by giving you a concrete example and asking you to make the necessary changes in order to apply it to yourself.” (p. 305)

“I think the translation has overstepped a boundary: It is the job of readers and preachers to learn the rules for biblical interpretation and application, while translations should give an accurate idea of what the text says. Didn’t a daughter in the original audience have to do the same?

“This overstepping is the logical consequence of the requirement to clarify, combined with the discarding of the form of the original. That very form is the only thing that provided any constraints to clarification.

“These examples all share a common problem: They result from a translation philosophy that emphasizes “clarification” on behalf of the modern reader. The irony is that following this impulse has so often resulted in less accuracy in the end product.” (p. 306)

<>We ought not hide verbal parallels from the reader when those verbal parallels have a bearing on the same topic. (p. 311)

>

Losing the feel of an allusion leader to losing some of the message… (p. 312)

But in making it easier for the English reader they have actually deprived him or her or the chance to see something that is there. (p. 313)

My objective has been to discern whether or not dynamic equivalence (as it claims) does an equal—or even better—job of conveying meaning in comparison to the essentially literal approach. I find that it fails, and fails consistently, and the more dynamic the translation, the worse the failure. I think that the explanation for this lies in two main impulses that undergird the dynamic equivalence philosophy: the separation of form and meaning, and the desire to clarify the meaning of the text beyond what is actually present in the linguistic details of the text. (pp. 315-316)

I think that only an essentially literal translation philosophy has any hope of giving a Bible to the people that merits their regular use. (p. 316)

* * *

I'd encourage you to keep an eye on Mark D. Roberts' excellent series on the TNIV. Mark is more open to dynamic-equivalent translations than Collins is (or than I am), but I'm certain you will learn something not only from what says, but in how he is saying it.

I leave tomorrow for a short-term trip missions trip to Indonesia. I'll see if I might be able to post a blog or two from the Singapore aiport or from Indonesia itself. But in the meantime, I've asked my friend Gary Steward--now a pastor in Canada--if he'd "guest blog" for the week that I'm gone. Enjoy.

I found it interesting that he refers to Martin Luther King as a "radical Christian."

The late Tom Skinner, an African-American evangelist, wrote in his Black and Free (1968).

I am not sure that Martin Luther King knew Jesus Christ in the evangelical Christian context. One of the few reporters to interview King on his religious thought, was Presbyterian layman Lee Dirks, of the National Observer. Dirks found few traces of the hard fundamentalism in which King was reared. King rejected the idea of original sin; that is, he rejected the concept that a person is born separated from God. MLK accepted the deity of Jesus Christ, and the fact that Jesus Christ was divine, only in the sense that He was one with God in purpose; he believed that Jesus Christ so submitted His will to God’s will, that God revealed His divine plan through Jesus Christ; but he did not accept the fact that Jesus Christ was actually God or actually the Son of God, or God manifested in the flesh. Reflecting much of the liberal instruction he received in liberal institutions, he considered the virgin birth a mythological story which tried to explain that Jesus Christ had moral uniqueness, rather than the fact that His birth was a literal fact--that is His virgin birth. . . . He missed on important fact, and that is that man must be regenerated, his attitudes must be changed, a revolution must first occur within his heart, before it can occur in society (pp. 136-138).

My own research into King’s writings in seminary has confirmed this. I’ve seen no indication that he ever repudiated or moved beyond the beliefs summarized below. In fact, the evidence suggests that he continued to believe them. Even raising the question will be seen by some as racist, or as seeking to undermine MLK's significant achievements. But we must care more for truth than for how others might misinterpret our actions and motivations.

MLK believed that doctrine of Jesus’ deity developed due to Greek philosophical influence and because the early church saw him as the highest and the best

MLK believed that the “virgin birth” was unscientific and untenable; like divine sonship, this doctrine developed as a way for the early church to indicate how highly they valued the uniqueness of Jesus.

MLK believed that the doctrine of the resurrection of Jesus was an attempt by the pre-scientific early church to symbolize the experience that they had with Jesus.

MLK praised theological liberalism. In addition to the denial of the doctrines of divine sonship, the virgin birth, and the resurrection, MLK points out that there is also a denial of Scriptural inerrancy and the doctrine of the fall.

MLK scorned theological fundamentalism. MLK seems not to believe in the direct creation of the world by God, man as being in the image of God, the historical account of Adam and Eve, the person of the Devil, the Fall, hell, the Trinity, the substitutionary atonement, and the Second Coming.

3.In his paper, “A Study of Mithraism,” MLK suggests that the doctrines of the early church grew out of the Greek mystery religions and cults which flourished at that time.

4.In an interview with Time Magazine, MLK seems to indicate that it was at Crozer Theological Seminary (the setting for the term papers quoted above) that he saw that the ministry was a framework by which he could express his philosophy of social protest.

A bright student, he skipped through high school and at 15 entered Atlanta’s Negro Morehouse College. His father wanted him to study for the ministry. King himself thought he wanted medicine or the law. "I had doubts that religion was intellectually respectable. I revolted against the emotionalism of Negro religion, the shouting and the stamping. I didn’t understand it and it embarrassed me." At Morehouse, King searched for "some intellectual basis for a social philosophy." He read and reread Thoreau’s essay, "Civil Disobedience," concluded that the ministry was the only framework in which he could properly position his growing ideas on social protest.